1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a barrier structure, and, more particularly, to an expansion-sealed flood control gate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to global warming effects, and as the global climate gradually changes, more flooding is occurring all over the world, and people are suffering from these natural disasters. In order to prevent flooding in buildings, people often use flood control gates at the entrance of the building. The typical flood control gate usually utilizes a water barrier overlaying method to deal with different flood heights and employs a heavy water barrier; as a result, the gap between each water barrier increases with the number of water barriers, which also increases the risk. In order to achieve ease of construction and lower construction costs, the traditional flood control gate design still utilizes right angled equipment for the corners; however, sharp bends in the compression strip causes uneven compression stress distributions across the compression strip. In addition, the junction of the compression strip at the corners are made by physical contact, therefore, the compression stresses at the conjunction are not completely not predictable or controllable, which is the basis of the most common leakage problems in traditional flood control gates.
The compression stresses on the traditional flood control gate is passive, which are generated according to the external forces. However, under partial water barrier weights, most external compression forces are applied on the water barrier at various points, which the water barrier then applies to the compression strip. In the traditional method, the compression stress value and the distance between each compression force application point are inversely proportional; in another words, when the distance is closer the compression stress values are higher, and vice versa. In order to solve this problem, more compression force application points and increased compression forces are the only two solutions. However, increasing the number of compression force application points causes an increased compression frequency, which results in longer construction times and higher material costs. Furthermore, increased compression forces causes compression stress concentration effects on local materials to be more severe at the compression force application points, which causes material fatigue and potential points of failure.
In addition, the longer the width of the flood control gate the more difficult it is for mechanical processes or construction applications to keep the gap constant or the gap to a minimum between the compression strip and the gate lip. Higher process accuracies lead to much higher equipment costs, and an increased strip thickness for gap adjustment purposes causes higher strip material costs. Another issue is, if the gate lip is accidently damaged and deformed during construction or later operations, the reliability of the damaged area becomes unpredictable. Therefore, based on either common experience or theoretical analysis, the more gaps generated in the construction of the flood control gate, the higher the associated risk. Therefore, both performance and maintenance issues for a stacked flood control gate are very worrying.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an expansion-sealed flood control gate to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.